Bookshelf

Photos submitted Seven years ago, Alex George founded the Unbound Book Festival with the mission of bringing together readers and writers to create diverse communities, exposing participants to new ideas and authors. Since then, it has…

Photos by L.G. Patterson Growing up, Nina Mukerjee Furstenau was raised between two cultures. As a toddler, her family left India and immigrated to Chicago and then to Pittsburg, Kansas. While her parents spoke Bengali at home,…

Just three years ago Skylark Bookshop opened its doors with a plan to do more than just sell books. Their purpose was to build community within their walls. That’s why Alex George, owner of Skylark and a novelist, started planning for a…

Photos by LG Patterson What do the University of Missouri’s president and a fiction novel about the California gold rush have in common? A writer named Gordy Sauer. As Mun Choi’s speech writer and an about-to-be-published author, Sauer…

Local author Kevin Doyle is living a double life. But, unlike the characters in mystery and detective novels like the ones he writes, his second identity isn’t a secret.

John Faaborg’s love of birds took flight early on. “My brother took me birding when I was 7 years old and I was hooked for life,” he says. “The excitement of being able to identify birds was one of the first things that drew me in, then . .…

JILL ORR'S NEWEST RELEASE EXAMINE INTERGENERATIONAL ALCHEMY. Jill Orr, formerly solely a mystery-genre writer, decided to step out of her comfort zone this fall and launch a new humor non-fiction gift book, How Not to Be Old (Even…

A book of prose poems that was first imagined and contributed to over 15 years ago is now coming to fruition. Mid-Missourian Walter Bargen, one of Missouri’s former poet laureates, is publishing his 24th book this August. The prose…

"You'll think of The Paris Hours for many hours after you've finished it, haunted by its shocking ending." Paris in the 1920s was a magnet magnifique, attracting all manner of artists, both acclaimed and aspiring. It hosted the likes of…

Peter Geye is so thrilled we’re talking about snow. It’s mid-February, his hometown of Minneapolis is enjoying a balmy mid-30-degree day, and unlike most of us curmudgeons praying for sunlight he’s not exactly ecstatic the winds are…

Claude McKay Love isn’t sure what he’s doing in Columbia, Missouri. The protagonist of Gabriel Bump’s gut-punch of a debut novel, Everywhere You Don’t Belong, Claude knows nothing of Missouri. His world revolves around Chicago’s South Side…

You’re a writer in Columbia. You’re still waiting on that six-figure advance, but you’ve been writing, so that makes you a writer, right? Yet no matter your experience level, chances are you’re doing the bulk of this writing at a desk in…

You might not notice at first. But screw up your vision, then peer a little closer at the cover of Phong Nguyen’s new novel, Roundabout. You’ll see it: The letter “e” in his last name is a faint, hazy gray, just a few shades darker than the…

In 1963, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. finished the final sermons that would become Strength to Love, a literary masterpiece in its own right, but also the first book of sermons by an African-American preacher to be widely distributed…

Stephen Paul Sayers became a bestselling author on the dare of a teenager — specifically, the prodding of his own daughter. An associate professor of physical therapy in the School of Health Professions at MU, Sayers didn’t seem a natural…

After losing her job in software development more than 10 years ago, Laura McHugh turned to her background in writing. “My husband was like, ‘You’ve always wanted to write a book,’” she says. “It seemed insane at the time, but it changed my…

Kerri Linder, author of the recently released Iconic Restaurants of Columbia, Missouri, never would have seen herself becoming an author of a culinary book back when she was working as an accountant for State Farm Insurance. She realized…

For those not familiar with Donald Quist’s work, his stories are warmhearted, sensitive and unapologetically honest. Growing up, Quist was raised in two homes; he lived part time with his father in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and with his…

Former Columbia Daily Tribune sports reporter Dave Matter, who now covers University of Missouri athletics for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has given Mizzou fans a new reason to cheer. In “100 Things Missouri Fans Should Know & Do…

From outer space to family secrets, Orly Konig has been writing all of her professional life — albeit about different things. Some things have remained constant, however, like her love for coffee, animals, writing and Columbia. Konig…